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As anticipated, now that the new net neutrality rules are here lawsuits have closely followed. The Washington Post reports that industry group USTelecom -- which counts Verizon and AT&T execs among its board members -- filed suit in Washington, while small ISP Alamo Broadband (its website is powered by Wordpress) is suing in New Orleans. USTelecom has opposed the Title II powers invoked by the FCC's new rules, and isn't waiting until they're published in the Federal Register before suing. A Verizon lawsuit knocked down the FCC's previous net neutrality protections, and this next round is only just getting started.

Uber isn't the only ridesharing outfit running into legal trouble these days -- Lyft is now facing a lawsuit over claims that it deprived new drivers of promised bonuses. The transportation company allegedly committed fraud by offering $1,000 to drivers who completed their first ride by March 5th, only to renege for many of them because it couldn't finish background checks on time. Lyft isn't offering a formal response to the suit just yet, but the company tells the AP that thousands of would-be drivers made it under the wire. However, lawyers maintain that hundreds of others didn't -- there could be at least $5 million up for grabs, according to the attorneys. It's too soon to declare a victor, but it won't be shocking if the pink mustache company is more cautious about handing out cash in the future.

Facebook isn't exactly a stranger to the courtroom, but it'll soon have another legal headache to deal with thanks to a recent court ruling out of San Jose, California. You see, US District Court Judge Beth Labson decided on Tuesday that in spite of the company's best efforts, Facebook will have to deal with a brewing class action lawsuit involving kids, credit cards and the company's long-dead virtual currency.

The Wikimedia Foundation is suing the US National Security Agency (NSA) for breaching Wikipedia users' privacy with mass surveillance techniques. It said that the aim of the suit is to "end (the NSA) mass surveillance program in order to protect the rights of our users around the world." The group maintains that the agency overstepped the limits set by the authority of the 2008 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FAA) amendments. It'll file the complaint in conjunction with eight other organizations -- including Amnesty International USA, Human Rights Watch and the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers -- and will be represented by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).

Microsoft may be taking some steps to make nice with the Android world, but the company is still willing to pick fights when its royalty payments are at stake. The Windows maker has sued Kyocera in the US over claims that Android phones like the Brigadier and Hydro series violate seven patents on features like location tracking and messaging. While Microsoft says it's hoping things can be "resolved amicably," it's prepared to go nuclear if necessary -- it wants a ban on those phones if Kyocera doesn't cooperate. We've reached out to Kyocera to see how it's responding to the lawsuit. If history is any indication, though, it may be tempted to settle. Microsoft already has most Android manufacturers coughing up royalties, and Kyocera isn't an industry giant with loads of cash to fight back.

Ready for a blast from the past? Ten years ago, Walmart's plan to undercut Netflix on DVD-by-mail rental pricing failed, and the retail giant turned that part of its business over to the movie service in exchange for a cut of the revenue, referral bonuses and Netflix promoting Walmart's DVD sales to rental customers. A class action lawsuit against the two followed in 2009, with customers alleging they illegally restrained trade and kept prices high. Walmart settled the case for $27 million in 2011, which will turn into about $12 (paid out in gift cards or cash) for the 1.2 million people who filed claims. While the deadline to file has long passed, the payout has been held up due to appeals in the 9th Circuit Court in San Francisco against Walmart and Netflix -- until now.

Despite attempts to curb patent trolls, at least some of them are getting lucky -- and this week, one got very lucky. A Texas court has ordered Apple to pay a whopping $532.9 million to Smartflash, a holding company which sued over claims that iTunes (specifically its copy protection, payment systems and storage) violates its patents. The Cupertino crew allegedly abused the inventions on purpose, in part because one of its execs was briefed on them over a decade ago.

Are you thinking about putting together a new PC? Check out our handy guide to help get started. In other news, some Lenovo PCs have been found shipping with factory-installed adware, Sony could scrap its mobile business and a new lawsuit filed against Apple alleges that the company poached a number of engineers for an electric car battery project. All that and more can be found just past the break.

Did you hear that Apple might be working on a car, or at least something that heavily involves cars? It's reportedly already got quite a team working away at the project. But, those employees had to come from somewhere, right? According to a lawsuit from electric car battery maker A123 Systems, Apple has been poaching its best engineers, apparently to work in a battery division of its own. The company alleges poaching started back in June 2014, with Apple drawing away lead engineers from the battery maker's "most critical projects." According to the filing from Massachusetts federal court: "Apple is currently developing a large-scale battery division to compete in the very same field as A123."

Sorry, Typo, you aren't getting away with paying a fine. BlackBerry has filed another complaint against the Ryan Seacrest-backed peripheral maker over claims that the Typo 2 iPhone keyboard also infringes on patents. Not surprisingly, BlackBerry doesn't believe that a few minor design changes (such as a battery indicator and a lock key) put Typo's eerily familiar-looking keyboard in the clear -- it wants a ban on Typo 2 sales. We've reached out to Typo to see what its response will be, but something tells us that the odds of a successful courtroom defense are even lower this time around.

Few people like being swept up in a legal dispute. Whether it's a small disagreement or a bitter financial feud, once the courts are involved everything becomes a slow, stressful and potentially expensive mess. That's why the UK's Civil Justice Council (CJC) is proposing a new online system that would deal specifically with "low value" cases. The idea being that most of these smaller disputes could be automated or handled with minimal supervision from legal experts, making the process cheaper, faster and more convenient.

It looks like Microsoft and Samsung aren't eager to drag out their dispute over Android patent royalties. The two tech giants have reached an agreement that ends Microsoft's lawsuit over interest payments and otherwise smooths things over. The circumstances surrounding the deal are "confidential," so it's unclear who made the most concessions. However, it's more likely that Microsoft came out on top. Unless the Windows developer was willing to walk away empty-handed (which is doubtful given its aggressive licensing strategy), Samsung probably had to cough up more money than it originally planned.

Apparently, BlackBerry took Typo to court again (and won), but not because of the latter's new product, if that's what you were thinking. A federal judge has just ruled in favor of the Canadian phonemaker after it accused Typo of making at least two bulk sales of its original BB-like physical iPhone keyboard (even processing 100 warranty replacements) despite an injunction banning it from the market. If you recall, BlackBerry sued the Ryan Seacrest-backed company due to its uncannily similar QWERTY keypad and won an injunction against it in March. The judge has ordered the accused to pay $860,000 for the violation, but the phonemaker originally wanted $2.6 million plus its lawyer's fees, so Typo really got off easy.

A woman who claims she was raped by an Uber driver in New Delhi last month has filed suit against the US-based car-sharing company. In a civil complaint filed yesterday in California, the unnamed woman, who's referred to as "Jane Doe," said the company put its bottom line ahead of ensuring rider safety -- especially its female passengers.

Been waiting for Sony to start dishing out the $15 million in restitution for the 2011 breach that took its PlayStation Network and Qriocity services down back in 2011? Well, thanks to the outfit putting a claim form online, now you can start the payment redemption process. It's limited to those who had either a PSN, Qriocity or Sony Online Entertainment account prior to the intrusion (May 15, 2011), and the payouts aren't all that different from what the firm gave out as part of its "Welcome Back" program at the time. Of course, back then PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Portable games and themes were a bit more desirable, but three months of PlayStation Plus is actually a bit more valuable now than it once was. Sony doling out the goods could still take a bit longer, though.

"Bad boys, bad boys, whatcha gonna do? Whatcha gonna do when they come for you?"...with radars that can "see" through walls. Because according to USA Today, at least 50 law enforcement agencies in the US, including the FBI and the US Marshals, have been stocking up on handheld radars for the past two years. The product they use is called Range-R (pictured above) manufactured by L-3 Communications, which is powerful enough to detect movement and even breathing within 50 feet, even behind one-foot thick walls of concrete. It also sees through wood, glass, dirt and most other materials used for walls -- except metal, that is. Plus, since the device has a 160-degree field of view, it only takes a few seconds to scan a house or any other location.

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fbilawlawsuitpolicerange-rusmarshalsFri, 23 Jan 2015 13:37:00 -050021|21133806http://www.joystiq.com/2015/01/21/lawsuit-alleges-ea-infringed-on-sports-stadium-update-patent/?utm_medium=feed&utm_source=Feed_Classic&utm_campaign=Joystiq&ncid=rss_semi
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White Knuckle IP filed a lawsuit late last week against EA, alleging that the publisher infringed on a patent that focuses on methods for updating sports games based on real-life changes. The suit referred to U.S. Pat. No. 8,529,350, which described methods that record real-world parameters, then store those elements on a server so players can download them to update their games. The patent dates back to October 2002.

While the patent is related to another one that deals with updating an athlete's statistics and skills based on real-life performance, the lawsuit focuses on changes to the appearance and attributes of stadiums and venues. The lawsuit specifically targets games in EA Sports' NCAA Football and Tiger Woods PGA Tour series, from NCAA Football 10 and Tiger Woods PGA Tour 10 through the last respective entries, NCAA Football 14 and Tiger Woods PGA Tour 14. According to Patent Arcade, White Knuckle "did not identify any specific feature in its complaint."

Google, Apple, Adobe and Intel do not want to go to trial in April -- they've made that clear by agreeing to a $415 million settlement for the no-poaching class action lawsuit filed by over 60,000 employees years ago. The companies originally offered $324.5 million in 2014, but Judge Lucy Koh turned it down, as she believed the plaintiffs deserve a lot more than that. That's still far from the $3 billion the plaintiffs originally wanted, but it's still $90 million more to divvy up amongst themselves. What's this no-poaching lawsuit about anyway? Well, between 2005 and 2009, these four Silicon Valley corporations along with Lucasfilm, Intuit and Pixar had an agreement not to steal each other's employees.

When Adobe, Apple, Google and Intel first offered a settlement to workers to make up for shady no-poaching pacts that kept salaries down, both the court and plaintiffs balked. They thought the $324.5 million was too low given the years of allegedly lost income and the financial clout of the tech giants involved. The Silicon Valley quartet is ready to give it a second shot, though. They've reached a new settlement that they hope will pass muster and avoid a full-blown trial in April.

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adobeapplegoogleinteljobslawsuitpoachingsettlementWed, 14 Jan 2015 16:58:00 -050021|21129813http://www.tuaw.com/2015/01/14/apple-is-suing-another-tech-company-drink/?utm_medium=feed&utm_source=Feed_Classic&utm_campaign=TUAW.com&ncid=rss_semi
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With Apple's Samsung troubles winding down and a potential settlement reached in that whole anti-poaching brouhaha, the company's legal staff obviously needed something else to work on. Apple was happy to oblige and has now set its sights on Swedish tech firm Ericsson. Apple's suit centers on Ericsson's massive collection of wireless patents and, more specifically, the claim that Ericsson's LTE patents are not a crucial part of the wireless standard and do not warrant the hefty royalty payments that the company has been collecting.

At present, the royalties for Ericsson's LTE patents are calculated based on the overall price of a device, be it a phone or tablet. Apple's hope is to get that changed, and to have the royalty percentage calculated based only on the value of the specific hardware component that actually uses that technology, which would bring the fee per-device down quite a bit.

The case was filed in Northern California, and is still in its preliminary stages, so there will most definitely be further news on this as it progresses.

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cellularericssonlawlawsuitlegalltenewsWed, 14 Jan 2015 13:00:00 -050016|21129674http://www.joystiq.com/2015/01/07/appeals-court-sides-with-ex-nfl-players-in-madden-likeness-suit/?utm_medium=feed&utm_source=Feed_Classic&utm_campaign=Joystiq&ncid=rss_semi
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A federal appeals court struck down Electronic Arts' appeal to dismiss a 2010 lawsuit in which retired NFL players alleged that the publisher used their likenesses without permission in Madden NFL 09. A three-judge panel unanimously declined EA's motion to dismiss the lawsuit on the grounds of First Amendment protections under "incidental use." Madden 09 included over 140 historic NFL teams as well as the stats and positions of thousands of retired athletes to celebrate the series' 20th anniversary, and EA allegedly altered jersey numbers and removed the players' names to avoid paying licensing fees, according to the August 2010 lawsuit.

The judges referred to another recent likeness lawsuit in the opinion, in which former college athletes sued EA in May 2009 over the use of their likenesses in NCAA Basketball and NCAA Football games. EA proposed a $40 million settlement to that lawsuit in September 2013, resulting in those players earning up to $951 for each year their likeness was featured in the games. The publisher added $8 million in expenses related to that lawsuit in May 2014.

EA introduced similar First Amendment-based defenses in its appeal for the retired NFL players lawsuit save for one additional argument: That the likenesses were protected under the First Amendment as incidental use. The judges "held that Electronic Arts's use of the former players' likenesses was not incidental because it was central to Electronic Arts's main commercial purpose: to create a realistic virtual simulation of football games involving current and former National Football League teams." The decision upholds a California court's March 2012 dismissal of EA's attempt to prevent the suit from going to court. Among the plaintiffs listed in the lawsuit is Sam Keller, a former Arizona State, Nebraska and Oakland Raiders quarterback that filed the original likeness lawsuit related to the publisher's college sports games.

The rivalry between Beats and its former ally Monster just got particularly bitter. Monster is suing Beats, its founders (Dr. Dre and Jimmy Iovine) and HTC for allegedly tricking it into giving up one of its best-known headphone lineups. According to the lawsuit, Beats committed fraud when it acquired the Dr. Dre audio range through HTC's investment. It supposedly repurchased enough stock after the HTC deal that it could sever its ties with Monster due to an ownership clause, leaving the latter high and dry with no real warning. Monster also believes that its ex-partner was misleading when it claimed in September 2013 that there was no "liquidity event" (that is, a major transaction) coming within one to two years -- Apple's acquisition of Beats clearly involved a lot of money trading hands. If Monster chief Noel Lee had known that the Apple buyout was looming, the lawsuit reads, he wouldn't have reduced his stake in Beats and missed out on the resulting windfall.

We know: Despite its best attempts at proving otherwise, Facebook and privacy have an oil/water reputation -- the latest legal news regarding the company won't help that any, either. A California judge recently ruled that The Social Network will face a class-action lawsuit following accusations that it peeked at users' private messages without consent to deliver targeted advertising. Facebook tried to dismiss the claims, saying that it didn't break any laws and that the alleged message scans were protected under an exception in the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, according to Reuters. Which one specifically? That these "interceptions" are lawful if they occur over the "ordinary course" of a service provider's business. The presiding judge countered, saying that Zuckerberg and Co. failed to offer explanation of how the scans fell under the website's ordinary course of business.

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ClassActionElectronicCommunicationsPrivacyActemailfacebookInternetlawsuitprivacyThu, 25 Dec 2014 09:18:00 -050021|21121064http://www.joystiq.com/2014/12/24/federal-court-dismisses-wiimote-patent-case-against-nintendo/?utm_medium=feed&utm_source=Feed_Classic&utm_campaign=Joystiq&ncid=rss_semi
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Nintendo has prevailed in yet another patent lawsuit, this time against Texas company UltimatePointer LLC, regarding a case we first reported on in 2011. UltimatePointer asserted that Nintendo's Wiimote infringed on its patent for an "Easily Deployable Interactive Direct-Pointing System and Presentation Control System and Calibration Method Therefor." In a Seattle federal court, Judge Robert S. Lasnik ruled that the Wiimote does not infringe on UltimatePointer's patent and found that a number of the company's claims were invalid, meaning no trial is required.

Nintendo of America Vice President and Deputy General Counsel Richard Medway offered the following statement about the decision: "We are very pleased with these decisions, which confirmed Nintendo's position from the beginning - we do not, nor have we ever, infringed these patents. The result in this case, once again, demonstrates that Nintendo will continue to vigorously defend its innovations against patent lawsuits, even if it must do so in multiple courts and commit significant resources to defend itself. Nintendo continues to support reform efforts to reduce the unnecessary and inefficient burden patent cases like this one place on technology companies in the United States."

And now this one gets thrown in the "backlinks about Nintendo patent disputes" pile. Electronics company Philips recently won a dispute in the UK against Nintendo regarding the Wii and Wii U's use of a camera and motion-sensing technology. Nintendo plans to appeal the UK decision, and Philips has filed against Nintendo in the US as well.

And just like that, the Rockstar Consortium's lawsuit campaign against Android is over. The patent holding group (backed by Apple, BlackBerry, Ericsson, Microsoft and Sony) has sold all of its commonly held patents to clearinghouse RPX for $900 million, or a fraction of the $4.5 billion the total patent pool was worth a few years ago. Rockstar will accordingly drop the lawsuits that it still had left, including those leveled against HTC, LG and Samsung. Don't worry that RPX will promptly turn around and sue someone else, either. It already has a deal to license those patents for defensive purposes to a group of 30-plus companies, including Google and Cisco, while the Rockstar companies get to keep their licenses.